“The two issues which ensure continued employment for food lobbyists are the sugar program and advertising to children,” writes George Franklin, former lobbyist for Kellogg Company, in his new self-published book “Raisin Bran and Other Cereal Wars: 30 Years of Lobbying for the Most Famous Tiger in the World.” “Regardless of which sides you are on, these two issues continue to be gifts that keep giving and have put lots of lobbyists’ kids through college.”

The book offers an unusually candid — and entertaining — portrayal of the central role lobbyists play in policymaking. Franklin points to the sugar program and the effort to limit junk food marketing to kids as not just a boon to lobbyists, but also an illustration of schizophrenic federal policy: “The fact that these issues coexist is illustrative of D.C. at work. It defies common sense to legislatively ensure that a commodity be grown while simultaneously discouraging its consumption. However, in D.C., this is normal operating procedure.”

The short read goes behind-the-scenes on several food policy dust ups, including the battle to get Raisin Bran into the WIC program, which ultimately failed, and the successful fight against the FTC when the agency went after Kellogg, General Mills and General Foods, alleging they were a shared monopoly. Franklin tells MA he wrote the book after realizing many business leaders have no idea how government relations works.

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